Christmas banned on college campus

With a stroke of the pen, a college has eliminated Christmas from the calendar. Likewise, Easter is gone, both now being branded "end of term" breaks at Yorkshire Coast College, according to the UK's Daily Mail.

The reason? Apparently school officials wanted to make sure they didn't "discriminate."

"Every school and college, wherever located, is responsible for educating its learners who will live and work in a country which is diverse in terms of cultures, religions or beliefs, ethnicities and social backgrounds," a spokeswoman for the college told the newspaper.

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"All employees at Yorkshire Coast College are encouraged to closely follow guidelines set out … for the promotion of equality and diversity," she said. "We constantly review the ways in which we communicate, to ensure that we do not discriminate, and part of those reviews means that we have stopped referring to the Christmas Break and Easter Break and we now have End of Term Break.

In the words of Tory Member of Parliament Robert Goodwill, that's "barmy."

"We are a Christian country and, to be honest, religious tolerance in this country is about respecting other people's religious beliefs," he told the Daily Mail. "We live in a country where there is a mutual respect for religious beliefs."

He said changing the names of school breaks to be politically correct is "absolutely barmy."

"School terms are traditionally separated by Christmas and Easter and they should be referred to as such," he said. "They are petrified that they offend the minority, but what they are doing is offending the majority."

The college, in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, offers a range of courses such as engineering, computer classes and motor vehicle classes.

The calendar on which the titles were changed is distributed to about 150 teaching staff members and another 50 workers to inform them of term schedules and deadlines.

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